Living a Good Way of Life: Perspectives from American Indian and First Nation Young Adults

Abstract

In this study, we respond to calls for strengths-based Indigenous research by highlighting American Indian and First Nations (Anishinaabe) perspectives on wellness. We engaged with Anishinaabe community members by using an iterative, collaborative Group Concept Mapping methodology to define strengths from a within-culture lens. Participants (n=13) shared what it means to live a good way of life/have wellness for Anishinaabe young adults, ranked/sorted their ideas, and shared their understanding of the map. Results were represented by nine clusters of wellness, which addressed aspects of self-care, self-determination, actualization, community connectedness, traditional knowledge, responsibility to family, compassionate respect towards others, enculturation, and connectedness with earth/ancestors. The clusters were interrelated; primarily in the relationship between self-care and focus on others. The results are interpreted by the authors and Anishinaabe community members though the use of the Seven Grandfather Teachings, which provide a framework for understanding Anishinaabe wellness. The Seven Grandfather Teachings include: Honesty (Gwayakwaadiziwin), Respect (Manaadendamowin), Humility (Dabaadendiziwin), Love (Zaagi’idiwin), Wisdom (Nibwaakaawin), Bravery/Courage (Aakode’ewin), and Truth (Debwewin).

Working Together to Advance Indigenous Interests with Community Psychology

“…These models include, among others, Community‐Based Participatory Research (Wallerstein, Duran, Oetzel, & Minkler, ), Tribal Participatory Research (Fisher & Ball, ), Two‐Eyed Seeing (Bartlett, Marshall, & Marshall, ), and Decolonizing Research (e.g., Smith, ). Articles in this special issue feature a variety of collaborative Indigenous community‐research arrangements, some spanning multiple decades (see Cwik et al., ; Kading & Walls, ; Rasmus, Charles, John, & Allen, ; Wendt et al., ), and they emphasize the centrality of relational context informing the strengths and weaknesses of these models for realizing the goals of each collaboration. Taken together, these works highlight exciting points of convergence between Community Psychology and many Indigenous peoples’ priorities while opening conversations within the field about the kinds of relationships that are needed to continue and improve upon in this work.…”

“…Although notable patterns emerged around historical contextualism, Indigenous self‐determined representations, and Indigenous languages, closer attention to how projects varied in their pursuit of these goals invites a much‐needed conversation within Community Psychology and with Indigenous community partners regarding what it means to represent Indigenous interests in knowledge production. For example, how might Community Psychologists’ concerns about Indigenous interests related to (mis)representation be differently directed by attention to Indigenous language terms and phrases (e.g., local terms used to categorize experience, per Kading & Walls, ) versus traditional language practices (e.g., storytelling, which may or may not be in a tribe's traditional language; per Gone, ). Engagement with both traditional language terms and language practices can be meaningful modes of Indigenous self‐representation.…”

“…Engaging in genuine collaboration and consensus‐building can also support Indigenous communities in specifying local, self‐determined understandings and concepts for communicating about health, wellness, and healing to better inform intervention research. For example, Anishinaabe community members worked together to define wellness concepts used to guide future research (Kading & Walls, ), while in another article, interviews with American Indian community members living on a reservation provided local definitions of health, illness, substance misuse, and recovery to inform a local multilevel community‐driven intervention approach to programming (Skewes et al., ).…”

Community Psychology and Indigenous Peoples

“…In “Living a Good Way of Life: Perspectives from American Indian and First Nation Young Adults,” Kading et al. () demonstrate how we can work with Indigenous communities to improve understandings of wellness by harnessing Indigenous knowledge using Indigenous methodologies. Working with an Anishinaabe community, these researchers employed collaborative Group Concept Mapping to explore what wellness means to young adults and then further synthesized these understandings with the Seven Grandfathers Teachings.…”

“…(), John‐Henderson et al. (), Kading, Gonzalez, Herman, Gonzalez, and Walls (), Parker, Pearson, Donald, and Fisher () and Wendt et al. ().…”